Wandering Love by Waya Amianan

Feel the warmth of your body

follow its sensations and

it will take you to the beating

of hearts that pulsate only

to the tune of dancing doves

and double rainbows

away from the calculations

of what is possible.

We do not fall in love with numbers

That count our tears, we cannot make

love to the zero’s and one’s and the

Yes’s and No’s.

Facts are lies.

Love lives

in myth

and mystery.

Our skin, the third lung

needs to be touched, caressed,

So our soft whispers of longing can

reach across the oceans of solitude.

When our ancestors read our palms

They knew that love had

wiggled its way into our lives

without leaving a trace, so they

had to search, find meaning in

trees that did not move in storms,

floods, and wildfires.

They knew that love jumped off

the edge of our palms,

so they turned to

the stars,

read every sparkle and glitter,

built rafts that broke,

built canoes that split in half,

and still they kept on

searching.

The brightness of the moon,

was enough so the

soul calmed down,

made love to the waves

of uncertainty, that led

to another tree and yet

another mystery.

Hiding, Hunger, and Hamilton

to carmen d, jenn c, ryan b, the hope of our people. for sneaking in food and drinks on the 4th floor of hamilton library and sharing with me laughs, over drinks and food. Agyamanak.

Hiding, Hunger, and Hamilton

On the fourth floor of Asia the coldness

of colonialism has gotten into our stomachs

and corrupted our culture and

made rough the road to freedom.

Come hide with me

In Molokai where voices are not silenced

and the cries of our people are made loud

where whispers are carried by the winds

to tell each other of our longings.

Come hide with me

hide our drinks that are soft in

the news of our papers

roll it up and conceal it so we

can feed the hunger of our ancestors.

Come hide with me

In Anaheim, where we cavort with the angels

who know the meaning of what it is

to fly away from the sea of troubles.

Come hide with me

and hunger in Hamilton

so we sneak the food from the paradise of our palms

where we read each other’s destiny

to write the abstract of our dreams

that will free our people of their empty stomachs,

so they can turn the tears into joys

that dried up before falling to the earth.

Come hide with me

In the Bay Area where there are no roaches

to scare away that ghosts that haunt us

in the dreams of our childhood.

Come hide with me

and you will see my waves

of freedom that weaves

in the straightness of tomorrow

that will shave the layers of

despair and desolation.

Hide with me so we can escape

together with the gods and goddesses

that bring with them spirits that ease

our wary bodies and feed our hungry souls.

Will you come and hide with me?

Letter to my Kadkadua, Part 2

Fil Am Observer

Agkabannuag

October Issue

Jeffrey Tangonan Acido

Kenka kadkaduak:

In a year and a half you will have to move to Manila—that big city that is home to homelessness and to dreams that have vanished, the dreams of your people, and the dreams of those who have sacrificed a lot to pursue the grand dreams of a homeland.

In Manila—there, there, you will meet your father for the first time—for the first of the time that you ever remember. You will have to get used to his absence. Forgive him. He is in Mindanao fighting a war he does not believe in but had no other recourse but to go down the road of young men who had nowhere to go beyond the fields of his hometown. You will ask countless times what war is like, but he’ll only respond, “the Muslims are peaceful people.” He will tell you the enchantments of the Moros in Mindanao, even speak the language of the Koran, but will never speak of the horrors of shooting or killing anyone. Try not to force the issue. Life is not easy to talk about, let alone war.

In the currency of your dreams your mother will leave you to make beds and cook the food of other people, never yours. For while, both your mother and father will come in and out of your lives. Though in the end you will all be together the distance between you and your parents will be farther than the distance between Ilocos and Hawaii.

When you have learned to love you will understand that your life will be lived in many terminals—bus terminal, airports, jeepney terminals—a constant leaving and going, arriving in places of comfort and confusion, sometimes delusion. These terminals of life will be places of returning and coming: returning to the Ilocos that is vaguely familiar; coming to Hawaii that you will learn to call as home; coming to California that has lost your people’s history; and then returning again to Hawaii that you have learned to call home. There is beauty in this; there is alienation in this.

You will meet many influential people in your lives; the first will be your Chinese professor who teaches Marx as one of the major religions. Oh, the academe will be a place of flourishing for you. There will also be the activists who, in many ways, will teach you to be humble, to lower yourself from the pretensions of the university so you can see the visions of your people—the vision that make love the catalyst of all that we can ever offer, of all that we are willing to give and share with others; the vision that can only be seen on the ground; and the vision that makes us alive because it is one that is steeped in the lessons of justice and fairness. These activists are only active because they want to learn how to love—like your mother. Your childhood and activist friends will be curious on what moved you to have this fiery mouth of yours (often getting you into trouble) and most will attribute it to the activists and academics that nurtured you.

A few will assume that it stems from the hurt and pain you suffered as a child; all the loneliness and painful separations from your family and friends, the many deaths in the ghettoes of Manila that remind you that life is most precious, the historical and present injustices that your ancestors suffer, or even the trauma of dreaming in another language foreign to yours—all these are true but only partially.

For the truth is you act because of the tremendous and resilient love that you received from your family and community. It is a love that grew in the adversities of life; a love that blossomed in the sharing of meals; and a love that continues to grow in the sacred talk-story circles in Kalihi.

This love is not beyond the realm of fantasy; it is lived and real. It is a love that tells the truth, however ugly the truth may be.

If there is any greater lesson you must take to learn it’s this: Never be cynical of love. It will take you many great years—perhaps all your life—to learn but never forget that love is what breathes life into humanity. Do not forget the answer you gave your student when he asked you, “Why do you care so much?” and you answered: “Because I love.” That should be an answer without explanation: “Because I love.”

LETTER TO MY KADKADUA, PART 1

Mag-anka Jeffrey Dalere Tangonan, my kadkadua:

Agmurmurayka! Breathe the air of your ancestors.

Now you see, now you see: You are not an accident of life. Your mother meant it all, this fact of your birthing, its substance and what it means to her and to you. The facts are wrought in stone, those hardy excess of the mountains and hills that depress into the lukong of your birthday, until that lukong—indeed, the Ilocos—reach out to the vast sea in the west: born July3, 1985, in the days of disquiet of your birthland, some few months before the people rise up in revolution against the dictator with only their rage to callthe shots so he, the dictator, would remember, that he had not the right tostay a second longer in power. So you were a prelude to the newfound birth of people's courage, mind you. You never knew—but now you do.

Like everyone else in your barrio, you were born away from the loneliness of hospitals or clinics. You were with your people, in the very heart of it all: in the warm and smoky kitchen built by your grandfather whohad come to Hawaii to seek his fortune over here, maybe misfortune, but fortunenonetheless.

I could imagine the welcome, my dear kadkadua: our twin cries breaking the silence in that hour of our birth, pacifying the anxiety, and giving calm and balm to the mother of our child's dreams, in the Philippines and in Hawaii, much later on. Our whole neighborhood could havecome to give witness to this birthing, the midwife with her crude but certainways, and the relatives' prayers that went with their frenzied ways of attending to the needs of both mother and midwife—and then us.

Someone could have gathered the leaves: the marunggay tocoax our mother's breast so she would have more of those colostrum, the first of the first milk we would need.

Someone could have put out the basi, the arak, the tobacco,the gaiety could have begun right there and then despite our young father'sabsence.

You see: he had to go away to fight a war he did notunderstand. Perhaps he did not like to wage a war with others, but Ilocos being Ilocos, with each parched earth and broken promises, he did not have to justify his leaving, for leaving he had tofight a war for a dictator who bluffed his way into greatness as empty as the fields lying fallow when the first rains of May fail us.

So we were born without him, coming into this world in war and in chaos, and in the din of what was left of the Philippines in those times with rallies and demonstrations that marked each day that we had to fight it out, with mother finally deciding to let go of the homeland and join her family over here so we can have a chance, one fat chance to be something better, to eke it out somewhere else in the hope that in eking out some life would come to us at last.

And so we left, you remember that. We left the barrio of our birth to get into another barrio—the same poverty we were escaping from—in thebig city, where soldiers like our father were doomed to be poor, were the poor were doomed to be poorer.

In the big city, we waited for the coming of our younger sister, Des, she who had come with smiles on her face, sunny smiles, bright smiles, her charm those of the days that gave out some hope for a land so rendered hopeless.

With us, you my kadkadua, Des, and I, we waited for our parents to come home, our mother from a faraway land she had gone to, and our father from the many wars he had to fight in Mindanao.

Some days, our mother would come, but not long—and Des would not know her, remember? Perhaps I was more understanding, more tolerant of absences? Perhaps I was getting used to it, this life with our neighbors shared day in day out, a life of absence, a life of constant looking for something better, something more redeeming beyond the small piece of meat we would share with equally poor children?

Kadkadua: You realize at a very early age that in the geography of pain and separation your neighbors were closer to you than your family in Hawaii—both in reach and intimacy. And your birthland is the same thing, despite its wretchedness: it is where you wanted to stay longer—and linger on. You remember the ceremonies of arriving and departing from this birthland, the ceremonies in the language you knew: Ilokano. Some night an adult with you tagging along would take the bus, and in the morning sunlight, there you were in Bacarra, in those flat lands of rice and garlic that in the east would reach up to the mountains and in the west would bow to the power of the waters of the sea.

This land of the Ilokos you returned to many times, as if in a ritual. And when it was time for you to leave, you just called out to your name: Umaykan, umaykan, di ka agbatbati! (Come, come, you are not to be left behind!) Of course, you were calling out to yourself.

I was calling out to you, my kadkadua.

The sounds of your first language, you are sure, are the powerful winds of the Ilokos mountains, the clatter of the water buffalo's steps as it pulls the sled that carries the bolo knives and shovels that allow the earth to breath, and the flow of the water of life to the thirsty rice fields of the Ilokos. Do not allow this language to be dead in you, kadkadua. It will be a struggle, yes, but it will be your connection to the gods and goddesses you will search for. There is no shortcut to the redeeming ways of the gods and the goddesses, you see.

Kadkadua: Ilokano word for placenta, twin, companion, to journey with, spirit, soul.

HEALING THE EARTH, HEALING OURSELVES

HEALING THE EARTH, HEALING OURSELVES

During the past several months I realized that I have been falling in love again and again with the majestic mountains of Hawaii. The language of trees and the winds speak to me; it is a language of knowing: the trees knowing the winds—and the winds knowing the trees—even before I existed. It is a language steeped in mystery and magic—as it is a language of a life fully lived.

One moment the wind is warm and the leaves of trees rustle with a soft whisper and in the next it gives you chill on your face, wiping off the sweat on your forehead. During one long and arduous climb to the mountaintop, I realized how heavy is our responsibility to take care of our Mother Earth. I realized how sacred is our relationship with the one that has provided for us the food and water we need to survive. When we talk about the mountains, oceans, and the skies we are necessarily talking about the sacred; when we talk about the sacred we are referring to the mute witnesses of this sacredness: the mountains, the oceans, the skies. And yet, this is one lesson that is not easy to learn. For here we are increasingly in the cloud of unknowing with respect to the care we ought to give Mother Earth and its mountains, oceans, skies. Here is a geography of carelessness. Here is a geography of pain too!

Increasingly and violently the skin of our Mother Earth (the Ina a Daga for the Ilokanos, and the Papahanaumoku for the Hawaiians) is being pierced and poisoned by the United States military. I do not say this lightly nor do I want to engage in a philosophical conversation. This abuse we inflict upon Mother Earth is not a mythology in the Western sense. This pain is real. And Mother Earth is hurting.

The pain is being felt here in Makua Valley and Waiakane Valley, among other places in Hawaii. It is felt in the Gulf of Mexico where thousands of barrels of oil continue to kill life in the waters, sky, and land. It is felt in the Ilokos and Mindanao where trees are being felled and shipped to the West. The largest and most merciless of the culprits is the U.S. military where it continues to bomb the face of our Mother Earth. One needs only to walk in Makua Valley where shrapnel and live bombs have yet to be cleaned up. These mountains and valleys hold in themselves the water of life. Again and again the mountains are drilled and put in pipes that divert unnaturally the water from one place to another, in the end starving the kalo (taro) farms of the natives so the U.S military can wash their laundry and keep those uniforms crisp and clean. This water is also used to keep green the many golf courses built on the living ancestral bones of the indigenous peoples of Hawaii. Can you imagine building a golf course over Punchbowl cemetery in Hawaii and Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C? What outrage will follow! To the U.S. Military life is cheap for the people in Hawaii, Okinawa and the Philippines.


The psalm of the Hebrews—a sacred text borrowed by the Christians—reminds us that we are made “intricately woven in the depths of the earth.” That is to say we are made of the same mud and dirt we inflict violence on. We inflict violence in the womb that gave birth to us. What a horrible way to die! Many have taken the popular route of recycling; setting multi-colored bins that separate recyclables and compost, paper, and plastic. I am not against this though the peace movement reminds us that ‘if the U.S. military does not stop polluting our earth it won’t matter how many of us recycle.’ The 10-cent reward will not heal the wounds of the land we live on; we must move beyond the evils of profit motive in dealing with our problems and relationships.

Because we value the land with less and less sacredness we in turn value our selves with less and less sacredness. On the same mountains and hills of Makua Valley you can see human shaped targets to be shot at with the most sophisticated weapons. A slogan like ‘one shot, one kill’ is used as motivation. A shot to the head is perfect, a shot to the heart will do. Soldiers are made to practice on human shaped targets so that life itself becomes a target; life itself is a threat; cardboard cutouts of human beings are made to condition the shooter to think that shooting the ‘enemy’ is like shooting a cardboard. And like the human shaped cardboard the ‘enemy’ has no best friends, no father and mother, no emotions of joy and sadness, no birthday parties to attend, it does not eat food, drink water or sleep to rest, only stand there waiting to be shot.

There are many who say that the U.S. military gives us our freedom. We should then ask what kind of freedom is worth killing other human beings over? What kind of freedom do we achieve by destroying our earth?

The Ilokanos say, Agbiag! as their own way of acknowledging that life as a value is an a priori one. Indeed, it is fitting to say Agbiag! and mean really, Long live! Agbiag! is the Ilokanos’ declaration that life needs to be affirmed, and always so.

Indeed we must always affirm all forms of life. And to affirm life is to practice peace. Peace can never be—can never come about—through the murder of innocent people and the rape of our Mother Earth—the greatest tragedies we have to bear with each day. But despite the horrible atrocities of human beings I continue to believe in the vast possibility of world peace.

In peace, we will have a chance to take care of Mother Earth, to nourish back to life this universe that has sustained human life.

In a conversation about peace, one of my friends remarked, “talk of peace is wonderful but imaginative at best.” The comment was meant to temper my idealism. But it also showed his cynical way of looking at life. That friend has accepted that there will always be war and assumes that it is part of human nature to be engaged in wars. He is wrong about war and he is wrong about our human nature. But he is right about peace—it is wonderful and imaginative. Peace must start from our great ability to imagine a reality that is empty of innocent lives sacrificed and the great earth torched.

Peace is not wishful thinking nor is it an abstruse philosophical treatise meant only for those wishing to be abstract or utopian—for those wishing to remain unengaged with the issues that affect our communities.

To practice peace is to practice what our great wisdom traditions and religions have been striving for—community, love, grieving, sovereignty, sharing, struggling.

To practice peace is to acknowledge that we have the right to our own body and land.

To practice peace is to speak freely the language of our ancestors in our homes, workplaces and schools.

To practice peace is to hold accountable the West in its excessive consumption of 75 percent of the world’s resources.

To practice peace is to first lay down our weapons without waiting for the ‘enemy’ to disarm.

To practice peace is to invoke not just our civil rights but our sovereignty rights—a right that goes beyond the U.S. constitution—a right that calls on the higher principle of love and self-determination for all peoples based on their relationship to the land.

To practice peace is to remember and continue our Ilokano and Hawaiian ancestors—Gabriela Silang, Father Jose Burgos, Jose Rizal, Queen Liliuokalani, Abigail Kuaihelani Maipinepine Campbell, Joseph Nawahi and the Kanaka Maoli nation—and their lived resistance to colonization and occupation.

Indeed we must acknowledge that we cannot be cultural practitioners if we do not continue the spirit of resistance started by our ancestors.

Finally, I say that peace is faith that has taken the leap of optimism into a reality that has yet to be unraveled. In other words, we must move and breath towards a reality that is not based on practicality but with creative, imaginative, and radical love.

Mahatma Ghandi once said, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

Our responsibility now is to sing the song of freedom and dance the dance of justice.

OUR ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LIVING HOPE

OUR ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LIVING HOPE

I had the chance to speak before my fellow graduates at a commencement ceremony of my graduate school of religion in the US continent a couple of years ago. This is what I said:

“Aloha, everyone. As I stand here and look at the proud parents, friends and loved ones, I am reminded of my mother. Right now she is working at a hotel in Waikiki, preparing beds and cleaning toilets for the tourists visiting Hawaii. In about an hour, she will finish her first shift. Right after, she will take an hour-long bus ride to go to her next job, at a local bank. There she will clean office cubicles similar to the offices of our professors who have talked to us about our need to work for democracy and justice and equality. My mother will have access to the bigger offices, too, the offices of the powerful. But that access is not about her power of which she has none, but that she has access to these offices because she needs to clean up the dirt in these offices of the powerful who, unmindful of what my mother does and the countless sacrifices she has to go through to pay for my college education, will turn these offices spic-and-span.

“I stand here before you as a proud son of an Ilokana working-class immigrant mother. It is her dedication to her children that has allowed me to go far—up to this point of my education. And yet at times, I feel that I would willingly trade this position for a moment of rest for my mother. It is her dedication to her children that has fueled my dedication to the struggle for economic, cultural, and linguistic justice in the name of our people.

“It took my family at least one hundred years to come to this point of having someone reach a degree of social mobility through education. My great-grandfather harvested sugar and pineapple in the plantations of occupied-Hawaii. And now my mother, three generations after, is working at a hotel, cleaning up the rooms of guests, and making them feel good so that they will come to Hawaii again.

“These hundred years is too long to wait, indeed. And I am lucky. I am the first beneficiary of those one hundred years of sacrifices.

“The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights leader, cried out, ‘Wake up, you chaplains of the common good.’ He was, of course, giving the admonition that we people in the seminaries and universities studying God’s Word must begin to let go of our claims to knowledge without our people included in these claims.

“This is a wake up call, indeed, even as we must look beyond the walls of our seminaries and universities and get off the Holy Hill and pay attention to those who cannot read our books. Some days, I am convinced that our ivory towers—our seminaries and universities—deliberately keep people of color out.

“But today, we graduates of color have come a long way. But this long way is never far enough to reach our people. Thus, our work is not over. We are still on that journey to reaching out to our people, to getting to that point where we are with them in that long journey to real freedom, to liberation.”

I spoke these words during our commencement ceremony. I had my professors and classmates before me. And even as I spoke those words, I trembled: I trembled at the thought that here was an occasion, another occasion, of a bundle of contradiction: we declare our good intentions, but we do not know if we ever will have the chance to pursue them, translate them into action. I could not settle within me whether I had learned to live a more ethical, just and compassionate life or just learned how to pretend like I knew what I was talking about; I felt, as if the pretensions and posturing that had gotten me this degree was eating away at the idealisms and the kind of ethics that I learned growing up in Kalihi—an ethic of relationality.

The stories of people and their struggles that I have learned outside of the university and seminary did not make it on to the books and texts that we carefully scrutinized, if it did, it was relegated to mere footnotes or labeled as ‘just’ anecdotal evidence, meaning to say—it doesn’t count as ‘proof’—that is to say someone who lost their home cannot possibly be qualified to comment on the homelessness—quote someone else more learned, someone who has studied and earned the qualifications of the white man.

I am not trying to rob away the importance of the great theories and wisdoms that I learned in the university and seminary—I am deeply in debted of the great scholars that I have worked with and the many great classmates that have taught me—there was value learning in the classroom—I only wish to say that the beginning of learning is the realization that everything learned must be met with a deep sense of humility, involvement, accountability, and returning again to the earth and people that have kept you alive and taught you how to love and relate with other people and the land.

Even as I spoke those words, I had my Kalihi neighborhood in mind, its picture distinct and clear, like a landscape demanding definition, like a land demanding nurturing, salving, saving.

It is the Kalihi neighborhood and what it stands for that I had in mind clearly and distinctly when I challenged myself and the other graduates to get out of our shell—out of our Holy Hill—and be with the people once and for all.

Now I see this: before me is a landscape of stories and sorrows—and a landscape of struggles and challenges as well. I had all those theories in mind, and I needed them to anchor in my talk in that graduation ceremony so it would have some resonance. Yes, resonance, indeed!

But on second thought, I did not need to be reminded that the minimum wage has no ethical meaning when what a family needs to survive—just to survive—is more than that amount.

The ethical burden was too much too bare in that talk—as it does until now, recession or no recession. I see the lines of hungry people. I see the lines of children deprived of warmth because their parents have to take on two jobs that would take their quality hours away from their children.

The wisdom I learned in the streets of Kalihi has taught me how to navigate the streets of Sunnydale projects in San Francisco and the South Central streets of Los Angeles. It has also kept me safe from the dangers of the classrooms. In a more subtle way, I have learned to navigate the subtle institutional violence my Kalihi is prone too.

But now, I have come back to Kalihi, to return to its earth and its bowels and its bosom once more. My mind is clearer now: I have to give my share in transforming my Kalihi earth and make it an earth of all the people of Hawaii once more.

This returning is important, as the Tongan poet Konai Helu Thaman reminds us: “thinking belongs in the depths of the earth/ we simply borrow what we need to know.” Indeed we borrow and the only way we can repay the interest of the borrowed wisdom is to come back, when you are ready, and share it with the land and the people.

And now I return to Kalihi with the interest rate of wisdom ever so high—the responsibility to share this wisdom with those who could not afford to visit and attend the great schools that I sat in; to transform this sacred place so all can have access to its rich resource of lived experience and stories that it may end these symptoms of oppression—high drop out rates, domestic-violence, military dependency, substance abuse, violence against women, no medical care, disregard of elders, and the overlooking of the experiences of the youth—the list goes on.

I have recalled what I told my fellow graduates during our commencement exercises when it was my turn to speak.

And now I challenge the new graduates to look into themselves and ask what they can give back to their own people and their communities.


To the graduates of this generation who choose to leave this sacred Kalihi I say peace be with you. I am delighted that you are leaving. Sometimes leaving is part of loving Kalihi. I hope that Kalihi has nurtured you as it has with me. Though at times it was violent I hope you never overlooked its elusive beauty. Remember that the violence is not intrinsic to Kalihi. I hope too that someday when you are ready, at your own pace and time, that you come back. Though Kalihi is alive it is not well—and so we need you—but only when you have sat in silence and heard the voices of the land and the ancestors call to you—you will know this because you will comeback and help not with the sense of guilt in the privileges that you have inherited but with the sense of urgency, clarity and the foresight to simply return that which is borrowed.

The point here is to move forward and to move on. The point here for our graduates is to make their graduation an occasion for hoping.

(Y)OUR COMING TO VOICE IN (Y)OUR NAME

(Y)OUR COMING TO VOICE IN (Y)OUR NAME



For Rev. Emily Joye McGaughy



You have come to voice in our name

Even as you have sought yours, seeking

Salving sentences and taming thoughts

Where language is absent and our grief,

Present as present can be in our search

For the fullness we shall be, takes flight

And flee to the permanent places of our pains.

In the seeking for meaning is all what we have.

It is solitude, this. It is aloneness of the self

We construct for others, believing in the faith

We have to come to grace to accept the truth

Of our bodies, their topography the distances

In the journeys we need to traverse in between

Commitment for difference, with our loss palpable

This sense of what we can do to make sense

With our wounded words, human and going divine

In the manner we can make a vow to live for,

To die for, everyday in one thousand lifetimes

And one thousand death-times in this ceaseless

Cycle of hoping what is yet to come, cool, collected

And clear, as the logic of alien loves beyond premises

Because peaking in all the warmth of smiles we have

From the cold trajectories of our dreams, young

And younger, always aiming holier and higher than

What the heavens can tell, these dreams of color

And the fullness of voice, fear hidden somewhere

Away from the syllables of music that make us one,

The courage in the verses you tell for us to bring

Home, sanctified lines, paragraphs, chapters

Of stories we write, in clear scripts and vision

To redeem ourselves from this sad longing

We cannot know, we will never know, but here

In this presence we have for each other, here

Is where our petitions will go: our prayers for you

Even as we ask you to raise your hand for us

In the name of the Spirit that will forever keep us.



Nakem Youth

Honolulu, Hawaii, March 27, 2010

KALIHI STREAM COMES ALIVE WITH OUR WORK AND COMMITMENT

KALIHI STREAM COMES ALIVE WITH OUR WORK AND COMMITMENT



Jeffrey Tangonan Acido



I grew up a couple of feet away from the Kalihi stream where there, when my cousins and I were young, we would fish for tilapia.



We didn’t use fishing poles. We waded into the clear water barefoot, in our shorts, and caught with delight with our bare hands, those small and innocent hands that felt what a living tilapia felt.



I didn’t like the taste of tilapia so I gave my catch to my grandfather.



The hardy man of the Ilocos who knew what the savory taste of that fish would stuff each of my catch with garlic, onion, and tomatoes and grilled it.



This was more then a decade or two ago, before the stream was filled with all kinds of contaminants or at least before they started to post signs of contaminations.



That stream was full of life: catfish, turtles, and other fishes whose names we never come to know.



By that bank of that stream, the old men and women—we called them tata and nana—would plant all kinds of vegetables and shrubs and trees that yielded all the greens and fruits we needed, the same greens and fruits that I remember were found in the barrio where my parents come from.



Now the stream is filled with garbage, broken bicycles and parts, toilets seats and parts, push carts from shopping centers.



Now the stream has lost its will to live and give off the fish—the tilapia—that I knew when I was a child, with its murky and oily water flowing with so much uncertainty by the slabs of stones and concrete on its path, with wild plants sprouting on the cracks of its cemented banks and side.



A makeshift house not so far away from the stream, and lonely and menacing and used for the ceaseless ceremony of meth abuse, stands by to guard whatever is left of my Kalihi stream, the stream of my young, the stream of my young memory of how is it to flow life’s currents, like the currents of that stream that came alive some years ago.



I am no expert on how rivers or streams work or how to plant papaya trees. What I see is the parallel stories of the youth in Kalihi to this once mighty Kalihi stream.



Somewhere along the way of my naïve, blissful, and idealistic days I was told to wake up, get a job and start to think like an adult or at least understand how the world works.



This kind of socialization started early. I don’t know when it started but I can remember it vividly during my high school years and on towards my college years.



I don’t know who was pushing us to do the kinds of things that stripped us of all creativity, imagination, and idealisms.



But I remember the many things said: they get stuck up somewhere in my head and they refuse to go away.



They said: “If you want a guaranteed job you must learn the Japanese language.” What they meant was since Hawaii is a tourist economy and most of our tourists are Japanese, we must learn the language of those who can buy ours souvenirs, who stay in our hotels and resorts, and who need pampering. After all, this is one definition of tourism: to bring in the tourists that will bring in the money for the economy to grow.



And then, of course, the bonus for the servitude: the tip from the tourist. The tip that validates our hard work, the tip that we must have done something right--smile bigger, bow lower, hide the emotions that make you want to live like a free person.



So instead of learning the Ilokano language I learned Japanese.



For every Japanese word I learned, I forget three Ilokano words I knew by heart when I was young. Quid pro quo: this is what this exchange was all about in my desire to flow with the currents of tourism. I did not understand that the Kalihi stream had its own natural life, that that life had to be sustained, in much the same that I had to sustained the life of my words, the words that would make me understand who am I as an Ilokano in America, as an Ilokano American in Hawaii.



As my fluency in Japanese got better, my conversations with my Ilokano speaking grandfather became one of pleasantries without substance, one that eventually came close to animal grunts, even as I became aware that I was losing my own language. I did not, of course, sense then, even if I was already feeling uneasy, my sense of self and identity. That feeling would come after, years after I realized I could not bring back the memory of the edible tilapia by the Kalihi Stream.



While my grandfather spoke with the eloquence of Ilokano, I drew in my mind katakana, hiragana and kanji characters; I listened but never heard his stories of hurt and suffering. Now our conversations consist of body language, pointing to the here and there, every once in a while I can describe how i feel to him, on bad days I wait for my mother and father to come home--my private translators.



They said: “If you want a stable job, good vacation time, and health insurance you should go for a state and government job—guaranteed good money—‘das how the Japanese and haole people are rich—they made it.”



So instead of pursing our passions for helping people, for creating a more just and safe society I focused on getting a good job with benefits.



I wanted to be like my Japanese teachers and the haole people at the capitol building. They told me that if they can do it I could do it as well. They told me that if you work hard in America and Hawaii, you would be rewarded. They told me that every body is treated equally. And since they made it, I wanted badly to make it as well.



I learned later that the Japanese people in the U.S. and Hawaii were put into concentration camps during WWII. The U.S. government and citizens made them feel ashamed to speak their language even while they took all their property away from them. They were considered as spies, potential terrorists, responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There were at least 120,000 Japanese descendants at that time; it did not matter that two thirds of them were American citizens. How could they say that they have ‘made it?’ knowing their history in the United States and Hawaii is filled with that deeply buried trauma? Can material wealth compensate for a damaged spirit and community? How can they say they made it when the same thing is happening to Native Hawaiians, Tongans, Samoans, Filipinos and Micronesians? Concentration camps now come in the form of homestead and housing projects and more subtle the education system.



When I left for graduate school in California I discovered that not all haole folks are rich. In fact there are more working class and poor white folks than rich ones. There are more working class and poor white folks than any other working class and poor racial ethnic minority in the U.S. The face of poverty is also white. That they were white mattered little when it came to poverty. Even rich and middle-class white folks practiced a kind of racism, perhaps classism, towards other poor white folks; that the term ‘white trash’ was used by rich white folks to separate themselves from poor white folks who live in trailer parks and other poverty stricken areas. Was this the idea of making it? Do we need to trample at other peoples humanity in order to make it? Are some people more equal than others? What is the measure of success?



They said: “if you want to get your education paid off while you travel the world, you should join the military—good benefits too!”



Instead of studying for the SAT to get into the university we were encouraged to take the ASVAB, the test administered by the U.S. military, a test that gauged our ability to serve in the armed forces. All we had to do was put in 4 years in the service and we can have all the perks of the U.S. military. I did not follow this path but many of my friends did. It’s been 7 years now since we finished high school and not one person among my friends who joined the military finished a four-year degree. Some did not get the money they were promised; many came home from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan wounded in body and spirit. Like their predecessors in Vietnam and other wars they suffer from PTSD and thus, unable to live the same life prior to their deployment. The recruiter told us that we may have to sacrifice their life for freedom; but it wasn’t said that they might have to take another’s life in the name of national security.



I want to say now to my fellow youth that we are not limited to these narrow paths. There is something peculiar about living a life defined by our ability to accumulate wealth and power. We are not defined by what we can buy or how much power we hold.





Let us rid the Kalihi Stream of the garbage that hinders its mighty path; of the drugs that slows the flow of its cleansing and nurturing waters. In less metaphorical terms—we can no longer be defined and limited by these choices. We cannot succumb to these obstacles that hinder our flowing on in life.



I want to say my fellow youth that we don’t have to lose the language of our ancestors at the expense of learning the language of business—namely English, Japanese and soon Chinese. Our language and our culture are more valuable than a business transaction.



We don’t have to lose our ideals, our visions, and our imagination in our work. We can work as community organizers and cultural practitioners. As community organizers, we can create spaces for other youths to express themselves and cultivate their talents. When the young dream of becoming artists, dancers, musicians, poets, writers, we can make sure that these dreams become a reality and not just empty dreams.



Our duty as cultural workers in Hawaii is to make it sure that the diversity that we are—this diversity that makes us—is maintained, sustained, and respected.



Our duty as cultural workers in Kalihi is to make that Kalihi Stream the stream of youthful vision again—the dream of a cultural plural life, the dream of a community that is sensitive to the culture and language of other people, and the dream of a community that makes it sure that all the streams of our life will flow to the sea forever in order to come—again and again—as a beautiful, living, running stream.

NAKEM YOUTH: STATIONS OF THE CROSS IN KALIHI

CROSSING TO OUR RESURRECTION:
A COMMUNITY MEMORIAL AT KALIHI
(RE)ENACTING THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Kalihi, Honolulu, HI, March 27, 2010

A NAKEM YOUTH CEREMONY
FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

By A Solver Agcaoili, written for Nakem Youth

ENTRANCE HYMN
(All members of the community will sing the hymn; they are expected to sing in all the parts with the ALL role as well as the community with the responsorial part marked ALL)

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Introduction: Jeffrey (JA)

Kakabsat--siblings in Christ the Messiah, who came among us, lived in this life in the flesh, become part of our story and history.

Christ, the child of the Namarsua, the Creator, is the child of the God that does not end, the Creator that will continue to sustain us, in suffering, in death, in the coming to life again of our bodies and spirits.

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

JA:
Christ said, when two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, there is Christ among us, there is Christ in our midst. Let us honor Christ’s presence among us by this ceremony of breaking of the bread and the sharing of the water of life.

The bread and the water are symbolic of the life we share in our faith, the life lived in earnest based on hope and justice and light.

ALL: (Raise the pandesal/bread and water; lay your hands over them)
Namarsua, the God of our life, confident in your promise of your presence among us, your presence in our midst, bless this bread and water so that they become the source of our nourishment of mind and body, spirit and soul.

CM 1: We offer this bread to those who produced it.

CM 2: We offer this water to the universe.

CM 3: We offer this bread to the hungry and disposed.

CM 4: We offer this to the health of the world and nature.

JA: We ask all this in your name

ALL:
Amen

(All will get a piece of the bread and drink of the cup from the same bottled source; everyone will eat and drink at the same time.)

JA: Let this bread and water nourish our body and spirit.

ALL: Let God bless this water and bread. Amen.

Community Member (CM, with a series of numbers for community participation)

JA: The first station of the cross: Jesus is the midst of suffering in the Garden of Gethsemani

CM 1: Lord, even as you go through suffering in the Garden of Gethsemani and even as we go through the same suffering, we ask you to remember us.

CM 2: We are anguished by the continuing divide, Oh God, between those who have the resources to get by in life and those who do not have enough like us.

CM 3: Even as we suffer, even as we witness all these economic injustices, even as the poor like us and even as the poor among us continue to hope for a better life, dear God, Namarsua iti langit ken daga, Namarsua iti biag, make haste to help us.

CM 4: Come, make haste to help us, heal our community, heal our Kalihi, heal our people, and heal our lives, even as you yourself, Christ the Messiah, suffer in our name.

JA: This we ask of you, our suffering Christ.

All: Amen.

JA: The second station of the cross: Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested.

All:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: Everyday, there is betrayal in our midst. We betray ourselves, we betray our God, and we betray our Namarsua, the creator of life, by our decision not to act to correct the injustices around us. With the furlough, we betray our youth. God of justice, come give clarity to our education.

CM 2: Even as you were betrayed, Oh Christ, even as you were arrested, we see all these betrayals in our midst.

CM 3: We pray that you remember us even as you hear condemnation. We pray that even as you were condemned, release us from condemnation of the social inequities in our in communities—our being condemned to hold multiple jobs just to get, to endure the condemnation of selling our labor for the minimum wage that is not even sufficient to make our life decent.

CM 4: We pray that you have us all in mind, your sisters and brothers, even as you were bussed with the kiss that signaled your betrayal. We pray that the 30 pieces of silver is not going to be what our worth will be but our worth will be an eternal life with you.

JA: This we all pray

All: Amen

JA: The third station of the cross: Jesus is condemned to death.

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: We pray to you, Oh Christ, we pray that we will be spared of the wages of sin and death, even as we become aware of the many forms of death and sin in our communities.

CM 2: With our life, we are also condemned to death. Because of the unevenness of our access to the resources of our communities, because of disparities in incomes, because of the disparities in our access to the goods of our social life, we are also condemned to death. We pray that those who do not look like us, that those who do not love like us, that those who do not think like us will see hope in you.

CM 3: We are condemned as well, true. But we will not accept this condemnation because we know, our Namarsua, the creator of life, the harbinger of our hope, the promiser of our redemption, that you have been condemned to death because of us.

CM 4: Because of your passion, because of your willingness to go through it all, because of your promise of a new life for us and our condemned communities, we will rise with new hopes again and again, Oh God of life.

JA: This we all ask our brother the Christ to intercede for us so that our hopes will continue to be alive

All: Amen

JA: The fourth station of the cross: Jesus is denied by Peter.

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: Christ, our brother in faith, we pray for strength

CM 1: Dear Christ, even as Peter denied Christ out of fear and because of fear, because of the threat of persecution, because of the lack of moral courage, with you abiding love, lead us to the light.

CM 2: Lead us to where we should go and keep us with your guidance we are show our solidarity with our people and with other people, as we show our solidarity with the people of Guahan—with the Chamorro people, with those communities that are affected by the build-up of military bases in Hawaii and the Pacific.

CM 3: Give us the strength, Oh Christ, so that we will not lost sight of the need to be just and fair with others, even as we need to fight for justice and fairness everywhere, in communities undergoing repression.

CM 4: We pray for the moral courage not to betray the very causes that make us alive and authentic human beings, the courage to be true to our calling as children of God and your sisters and brothers in faith.

JA: All this we ask of you in the name of the Spirit that nurtures courage

ALL: AMEN

JA: The fifth station of the cross: Jesus is judged by Pilate.

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: Acting: Hear, hear you people, this is your Christ!

CM 2: Free Barabbas, not him!

All: We are not going to be Pontious Pilate!

CM 3: Hang him!

ALL: Free Barabbas!

ALL: Hang the Christ!

CM: Hang the bogus, the impostor!

CM 4: Dear Christ, we ask for the forgiveness of our trespasses!

ALL: We ask that we will not forget the sufferings of the native Hawaiian people—the Kanaka Maoli—and the injustice done against them even as they continue to struggle for their sovereignty and freedom.

CM 5: We ask that the struggle of the native Hawaiian people—the Kanaka Maoli—their struggle to make sense of their history, to make sense of their community that has welcomed us in generosity of spirit, will enlighten all other people in the same path to freedom.

JA: We ask all these in the spirit of truth and acceptance, of solidarity and community, of peace based on justice and fairness and non-violence.

ALL: Amen

JA: The sixth station of the cross: Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns

ALL:
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

CM 1: Everyday is the crowning of thorns on us as well.

CM 2: This economic meltdown, Oh Christ, is causing a lot of anxieties among.

CM 3: This recession, not of our own doing, is taking hold of our daily lives. It is making our burdens heavier, our days more heady.

CM 4: Remove these from us, Oh Christ; take them away from our shoulders.

JA: Let this crowning of heads with suffering, let this carrying of troubles and burdens be an occasion for your grace, Oh Christ, our kabsat in the faith.

ALL: Amen

JA: The seventh station of the cross: Jesus takes up his cross

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: We offer this station of the cross to all our social activists present in this gathering. It is through their light that we see better, that we see the road ahead. It is through their walking with us that we feel uplifted.

CM 2: Oh Christ, let this activism be the virtue of our life as people of the Creator. Let this activism be the energy that will make us see more fully in the round our true vocation to the nurturing of each other and our communities.

JA: Let your light shine upon us, Oh Christ.

CM 3: Let us take up our cross as well so we will learn to walk bravely the road to you.

CM 4: Let your light shine upon us so that in our activism, your guidance will continue to be upon us, the light of your justice will keep us, the light of your truth will steady us, and the light of your grace will strengthen our resolve to do more for others and our communities.

ALL: Amen.

JA: The eight station of the cross: Jesus is helped by Simon to carry His cross

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: Help us carry your cross, Oh Christ. With your grace and blessing, may we come to a fuller understanding of the mystery of your suffering even as we try to understand the mystery of suffering in our midst.

CM 2: We have come to know the violence in our families and we have not done enough to carry the cross of the victims.

CM 3: We have to know the violence of the social media of which we have become consumers and we delight in them, never seeing our role in the perpetuation of this same cycle of violence.

CM 4: We have not helped carry the cross of the poor. We have allowed the sick alone and deserted. We have not offered our shoulders to the lonely in the hospices and in retirements. We have not addressed the burden of homelessness, the lack of jobs, the lack of alternatives to this misery and poverty that we have to know so well.

JA: Dear Christ, our Namarsua, the creator of that which is us and that which will be, help us see our role as your children who must care for each other, who must show concern for each other, who must keep each other. Teach us the way to you so that we will see that we are each other’s keeper, and so that we will maintain our resolve to make our communities safer.

All these we ask of you

ALL: Amen.

JA: The ninth station of the cross: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

CM 1: Christ, our brother and sister, we dedicate this station of the cross as memorial to all women who succumbed to death because of violence. With this memorial, we pray that women will come to understand that the bigger issues of justice and peace are out there even as we acknowledge that the individual violence that we are remain to be a problem as well.

CM 2: Let this station of the cross be our way of recognizing the unwavering faith of all women, their faith in the Namarsua that nourishes life, the faith in the God that does justice, that faith in the God, all knowing and all fullness, that redeems us from all these ignorance, callousness, apathy, indifference.

CM 3: Even as the women meet you, Oh Christ, show us the way to meet you as well.

CM 4: Show us the way, Oh Christ, to transcend the mundane, even as we are not going to forsake our duty to renew the world. Lead us to a full meeting with you, like the women of Jerusalem, like the women in our communities who have not stopped believing in the power of our love.

JA: All these we pray

ALL: Amen.

JA: The tenth station of the cross: Jesus is crucified

ALL:
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

CM 1: We offer this memory of this station to all those who have gone before us, those who have died believing that God will reward them with a new life.

CM 2: We offer those who die a thousand deaths so others will have a good life, so that others will have the chance to live, so that others will live in God’s grace.

CM 3: We pray for those among us whose parents, relatives, or family members have departed. We pray for Kat, whose mom passed away without seeing Kat, our dear sister, graduate from college.

CM 4: We pray that Kat will find the courage to keep going in life even as your crucifixion reminds us of the peak of suffering.

JA: (WE ASK KAT TO SAY A LITTLE PRAYER FOR HER MOTHER.)
We ask this of you

ALL: Amen.

JA: The eleventh station of the cross: Jesus promises His kingdom to the repentant thief

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

CM 1: Dear Christ, we know of your promise of eternal.

CM 2: Make us see, Oh Christ, that this promise of eternal to the thief is promised the same way to us.

CM 3: We believe in the sanctity of your Word. By your Word, let us come to life, to grace, to voice, to solidarity with others, to a communion with you.

CM 4: Help us, Oh Christ, so that by our deeds, we will become a promise to all others, so that we will become agents of your grace.

JA: We ask this of you

ALL: Amen.


JA: The twelfth station of the cross: Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other

ALL:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

CM 1: By Christ entrusting his mother to John, let us have the courage to entrust our faith with each other.

CM 2: Let us have the grace to accept that our sisters and brothers are entrusted to us.

CM 3: It in the same light that those who are sick and poor, those who are homeless, those who have nowhere to turn to, those young people who need counsel—let them come to us, in the way you have allowed those who need your counsel to come to you.

CM 4: Make us the vessel of the Spirit so that those whom you entrusted to our care will be cared for by us.

JA: All these in your name

ALL: Amen.

JA: The thirteenth stations of the: Jesus dies on the cross

ALL:
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

CM 1: Even as you died on the cross for our sins, we offer this station to all our young people who need not go through crucifixion and death, who need not go through suffering, who need not suffer more than what they can handle. Let them come to voice, Oh Christ, and let them learn to pave the way to you for us all even as we learn to listen to what they say to us.

CM 2: Our young are our hope. Let them be redeemed by the promise of your death. If they have to go through life, let them carry their cross with grace, with the wisdom of your truth, with the light of your love.

CM 3: Let our young people know that life is the tear on (y)our eyes and the smile on (y)our lips, the smirking on (y)our face, and the laughter of (y)our joy.

CM 4: Let them see that you, our Christ, who has uttered the truth of salvation, is the same Christ that uttered the truth of the heaven that we have to build on earth.

JA: This we all pray

ALL: Amen.

JA: the fourteenth station of the cross: Jesus is laid to the tomb

ALL:
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

CM 1: We now come to a memorial of your death. We lay you on the tomb and cover your grave with a stone.

CM 1: But we will always remember that we are the community of faith that inherited your good news, the sacred word you revealed to us.

CM 2: By your death, Oh Christ, shall you rise again to reveal to us the fullness of your truth,

CM 3: The light of your glory even as we remember the wars in other lands,

CM 4: The death that happens in our places,

CM 1: The tragedies and natural calamities that visit us,

CM 2: The heavy weight of war industry and militarization and tyranny and hunger in other lands

CM 3: The cross of everyday that we bear to eke out a life,

CM 4: The promise of redemption that we hope as ours in the end.

CONCLUDING PRAYER

JA: You have heard our supplication, Oh Christ, hear the prayer of your people, makes haste to clear our heart and mind in anticipation of your glory.

CM 1: By your death so shall you come back to us again,

CM 2: Rising in glory, rising in glorified body,

CM 3: Rising with the eternal spirit of the Creator,

CM 4: Rising with the full vision of heaven that awaits us, the heaven whose seed we nurture in this life.

JA: We memorialize your death, but we await your resurrection.

CM 1: We remember our suffering, and by your grace, we go through the same death that you go through,

CM 2: But by your promise of redemption, we know we have been saved from us these tragedies.

CM 4: Even as we memorialize the entombing of the tomb of Christ, we remember always that there is that hope for the coming to life of our sibling, our kabsat, in the faith,

CM 1: The child of our Creator who came among us to live like us, in flesh and blood, to live like us in our history and culture and language,

CM 2: The way Christ lived in the history of our faith, in the culture of the Jews, in the language of the Jews.

CM 3: We pray that through this memorializing of our programs for diversity, for cultural pluralism and for the celebration of our various heritages, the Christ of history will be remembered more and more.

CM 4: We pray that with our coming to our language, we come more and more to our voices as various peoples of God, we come to voice, this voice that we are because it is the voice from the Word that is sanctified, made holy with our participation in history and our own cultures and languages.

JA: Dear Christ, our sibling, our kabsat, the Son of God who is God of languages, of histories and cultures, listen to our prayers, and listen to our supplications. We have come here as a community to celebrate your death, a celebration that leads into that hope that is the very reason of our faith: your coming to life again, our coming to life again.

ALL:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

BEYOND THE FAITH BASED ON CONVENIENCE AND COMFORT

I am praying as someone who lived in the squatters and slums of Third World Manila and now live with certain privileges of the First World in the occupied state of Hawaii, privileges that are not afforded to the 90 percent of the people of the Philippines and privileges that are not afforded to the indigenous working-class Hawaiians in their own land. I am praying as someone who is trying to be a Christian in the First World, trying desperately to hold on to my faith—a faith that I learned from my mother.

In many ways these privileges that I have gained have made it harder to pray and live out my faith. Lent has begun. It will be a time of solemn prayer and a time of reflection.

Many Christians will be called to observe the suffering of Jesus. Some will choose to give up something that is taken for granted. We may give up a certain type of food, rice or sugar for some; for others it’ll be meat or a favorite dish; yet others may choose to fast, abstaining from all types of food. There is beauty in this observance—there is beauty in it's intent. Absence of comfort has the potential to make us realize the kind of logic that First World peoples operate on—the logic of convenience. And logic of comfort. It is not difficult to translate the logic of convenience to a faith of convenience. It is not difficult to translate the logic of comfort to a faith of comfort. A faith of convenience may allow us to see the suffering of Jesus. Some will react, with fervor, by blaming the Jews and some will put the blame on Pilate, discussing a kind of state sponsored torture. The problem is it stops there, and begins again next year’s Lent. A faith of convenience will look and then look away, fast. And a faith of comfort will just be that: faith makes one comfortable. And makes one feel good. And stops there.

I want to share with you the kind of faith that I imagine; the kind of faith that is practiced by many of the 90 percent poor peoples of the Philippines; the kind of faith that is uncommon to the 81 families who own the Philippine Islands; the faith that plants marunggay and harvests oranges in Makua Valley; the faith that restores our umbilical cord to each other and the land; the faith that struggling poets live and write about; the faith that is not always sweet, sometimes bitter, but always good for the soul; the faith that is a threat to the ‘national security’ of empires; the faith that can make wider the 'window of vulnerability' of the those in power in order to make wider it’s window to grieve because grieving makes us human again and again and again. Any attempt at closing this sensitivity to life’s openness to grieving and therefore suffering is an attempt to trade false pretensions of security for the love and grace of God.

I am slowly realizing that a faith rooted in convenience and comfort is what I am headed towards. It is a faith that moves away from the faith of my mother.

This is the faith that has saved me—and I wish to share my story during this Lenten season:

As a child I suffered from a weak body, a body that does not allow me to breath with easiness. In many nights, in unexpected hours, my lungs would struggle for air, my body would suffocate, and then would start to shut down, and in a matter of minutes darkness would envelop my mind and body. With her arms wrapped around me, rosary in her hand, she would slowly bring my convulsing body to calmness. I would feel my clothes wet with sweat and drenched in my mothers tears. Her recitations would go on and on and would fill me with hope: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you…" The slow but methodic rhythm of her repeated supplications and the command of her voice would make my weak lungs be filled with air and resurrect my body, at least for another night. After each painful episode I would ask her, “Why would god let this happen?” Like her God, she remained silent.

I struggled with this experience. I struggled to make sense of this in light of my faith.

I realize now that it wasn’t pain and suffering that brought up my faith. It was the love of my mother. It was her unwillingness to surrender to pain and suffering; it was her courage to resist letting go of a sickly child and resist what seemed to be inevitable for a dying body. Her faith made real her imaginations of a resurrected body. Her faith is married to hope, one that springs eternal, one that is forever, and one that is called virtue.

I want to say explicitly that this kind of pain and suffering is not the way to God—even if it has made me closer to God—closer to Her love, closer to His compassion and closer to the righteousness of the Land. This pain and suffering was caused by poverty, because we had no access to health care and because our Philippine government tacitly declared 90 percent of its people invisible—dead—alive only when it comes to collecting taxes and during elections—something our U.S. government have in common.

We must guard ourselves of theologies that promote suffering as the way to God. In the suffering of Third World peoples, women, queer and the working-class, we cannot afford more violence in the form of starvation, rape, abuse, domestic-violence, and illiteracy as a means to God. We must not endure this kind of suffering. We must never let the tears of the oppressed to flood humanity, to let it go this far would have been a failure to recognize that there are people suffering in the first place.

Faith is resistance. It is the refusal to let people go hungry; it is the reclaiming of our souls and bodies; it is the courage to move away from abusive relationships and all forms of violence that harms life; it is the sheltering of the homeless; it is the disarming of the industrial military complex, the refusal to arm humanity with weapons that have the ability to wipe out a whole race in a matter of seconds—without a tear; it is the speaking of many languages; it is the crying, laughing, grieving and rejoicing all in one emotion; it is the making louder the cries of the oppressed.

In this season of Lent let us move with a more vigilant hope and a more critical faith.

May the grace of god, the wisdom of our ancestors and the breath of the land guide us to always affirm life. Amen.
















This is dedicated to the poet and theologian Emily Joye McGaughy. Your shared tears and woundedness helped me to see the U.S. with a more open faith and more hopeful future. In the coffee shop and over the marina I witnessed your deep compassion for people, for your father. Your theopolitcal love has guided me in my time in Berkeley. Aloha and Dios ti agngina.

EXORCISING THE COMMERCE OF LOVING

From the Ecclesiastes—also called Qoheleth in other periods of the Christian and Jewish traditions—comes an admonition about time, human time, that Time that we need to reckon with.

It says, in that prescient voice: there is time to be born, there is time to plant, there is time to heal after being wounded, there is time to dance after sorrowing, there is time to be silent after speaking out, there is time to love even after losing loving again and again, there is time to let ourselves be lost in the universe without the rigidity of rules that do not make us human and humane.

It is Valentine’s—this month being bandied about as the month of love—and it is time to reflect upon what this is, this parcel of Time and the activities of the human heart that goes with it. During this month, we will be bombarded with what I call the commerce of loving, with that conspicuous consumption that goes with capital and that bland, almost unthinking consciousness that goes with it. It in this light that I would like to reflect on the nature of the time for real love against the backdrop of what we are losing—and losing a lot.

I do not want to strip away any great meaning that comes from what I have seen and done in the popular rituals of Valentines Day.

I have had my share of both receiving, more often giving, expensive gifts and dining in lavish restaurants.

At times these rituals can be very meaningful. For someone to save a portion of her or his hard earned paycheck and spend it on someone else is an act deserving of the very least a genuine “thank you”.

To make time and have dinner with someone, in an expensive restaurant or not, with a person or a group of people is more than a kind gesture. It is a thoughtful and a generous act—and both require some self-sacrifice. I will not hesitate to join together these rituals with the act of love. What I want simply is to add to the depth of these gestures, to gain a better understanding and appreciation by revisiting the rituals of loving and by stripping these rituals of those things that do not matter.

These rituals gain a deeper meaning when we think about those who are not able to buy presents because their hard earned paycheck cannot afford them to buy anything but the most basic needs—food and shelter—if at all. A revisiting of these rituals becomes deeper when we become mindful of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered brothers and sisters who cannot celebrate openly in restaurants for fear of homophobic reactions and retaliations.

Our understanding of these rituals becomes deeper when we think about those who can neither give or spend time because they cannot afford and/or are distanced from their loved ones. The Overseas Filipino Workers, for instance. Or those economic, war and political refugees. Or those with deceased family and friends, incarcerated peoples, undocumented immigrants come to mind. Indeed, being mindful of those that are ‘far from our embraces’ or cannot at all embrace gives meaning to an act that would otherwise be deemed superficial and trite.

Perhaps we can take a serious look at these realities and imagine what it means to be far from the embraces of others during a time where accessibility of travel and communication dis-members us from the joys of aloneness and solitude. If we step away from the most common heteronormative assumptions of love, norms involving the exclusivity between two people, maybe we can get some light and further breakdown these restrictions that are antithetical to love.

Love comes in many forms and relationships. There is love in the building of communities; there is love in the struggling together to demand the rights and livelihood of the community, tears and all, blood and all; there is love in the form of tilling the land like the love of the many tatang, nanang, manong, and manang who grew their own food in their rented farm and in their backyard; there is love in the religious lives of priest and nuns, people who live together for God, who pray together, who eat together; and there is also love in the solitude of those who wish to be alone. This should not be confused with being lonely. It is simply a matter of loving oneself and having a relationship with life itself, troubles and all, joys and all.

Valentines Day for many signify an obligatory romanticism—almost like a facetious ceremony that we are scripted to go through because everyone is doing it in the first place. No, we cannot be party to this kind of empty rituals, empty ceremonies. It high time we put more substance in what we do to celebrate love.

CELEBRATING THE MULTICULTURAL MULTILINGUAL FILIPINO (BREAKING DOWN THE ESSENTIALIZED IDENTITY OF 'FILPINO')

In the recent months I have written about the struggles of the Ilokano community—and thus, in extensu, Filipino community.

I have focused on the traumas of immigrants particularly the experiences of being an Overseas Filipino Worker and the Filipinos in the diaspora.

For this issue, I wish to write about the youth people, the young Ilokanos who constitute the majority of the young Filipinos in Hawaii, but whose voice is seldom heard, if not totally muffled by many forces both collective and personal.

One reason by this silence and absence of the voice of the young Ilokanos is the wanton collectivization and essentialization of the Filipino experience, this wanton lumping of the Filipino experience into a single experience. Let me say it straight: this is not what the facts of the ground are telling us. So many Filipinos out there are not just Filipinos: so many are Ilokano Filipinos; so many are Sebuano Filipinos; so many are Bikolano Filipinos.

The big trouble starts when we valorize just Filipinos without acknowledging the nuances and shades and shapes of Filipinoness. In the end, the popularized knowledge becomes a cover for ignorance, for multicultural incompetence, for insensitivity to the varieties of the Filipino experience.

This multicultural incompetence and insensitivity has sadly become the norm in Hawaii and which is one of the reasons why Nakem Youth is trying to correct.

Now, let me tell you about what we do at Nakem Youth.

In the past several months I have spent many hours, days, and weeks gathering the community to address the needs of our youth.

Last November, during the 4th Nakem International Conference held at UH-Manoa sponsored by the Ilokano Language and Literature Program at UH-Manoa, a panel of young Ilokano Filipino leaders spoke with a certain urgency demanding the elders and leaders of our community to lend their ears to the cause of multicultural competency and sensitivity in the pursuit of diversity.

In that panel, each young leader walked up to the microphone and each proclaimed: “We are no longer ashamed of being Ilokano! We want to learn our language, and the youth, whether Ilokano or not, have the right to learn the language of our parents, ancestors, and the homelands. We want to listen to the stories of our past, joys and struggles, without needing a translator; we want to learn the dances and songs of the homeland; we want to be free to express our thoughts, and we want to move and shape the Ilokano path towards justice and freedom!”

These young leaders had force in their words, had fire in their words, and had rage in their words as well. Even as they spoke, I knew--and I saw them: that they were guided by the courage and boldness and daring of their Ilokano ancestors. I hinted some pleadings in their words, and these pleadings were for real: “We ask you for your help, we need your help. Help us to make this dream and vision a reality for us all!”

That great moment of witnessing and testimony gave rise to what is now called Nakem Youth.

Nakem Youth is an organization that is dedicated to the pursuit of diversity, cultural pluralism, social equity, linguistic justice, education to democracy, and heritage rights.

Nakem Youth will be a space for our youth to express themselves through art, dance, language, faith, song and more creative ways of expression.

Nakem Youth will feature Nakem Youth People’s Theatre using their dramatic abilities to educate our community about issues that affect everyone.

Nakem Youth Press will publish the writings of our youth into books and literary materials.

Nakem Youth Solidarity Program will integrate the youth’s critical social consciousness to effect change in what matters most to our local and global community.

Nakem Youth Education Forum will build the infrastructure to engage both formal and informal education to prepare them in both the private and public sector of society.

Nakem Youth is not just a space for Ilokano- Filipino youth. It is a place for all who wish to learn the importance of their language; the urgency to hear the narratives of their ancestors--in the language of their ancestors in dialgoue with the language of our youth, and those who wish to realize the importance of their indigenous history, in every land that we identify with. Because we realize that language is not just a tool of communication, not just words in a sentence but a whole cosmology of being--being with the world--we want, we use, our languages, as a vehicle of liberative praxis.

We have now the right people in place, the blessings of our ancestors, the right virtues to guide us; we need now the support of the larger community. In this we ask for your help, the reader, for your time and other ways of contribution, in spreading the gospel of Nakem Youth.

In the meantime, let me put on record those who are initially working hard to make Nakem Youth happen: Rachel Aurellano and Jeffrey Acido, program directors; Calvin Rilviera, director for social communications; Julius Soria, director for finance; and Aurelio Agcaoili, executive director.

If you are interested in learning more about Nakem Youth or in making contributions for its various projects, please email nakemyouth@gmail.com or call (808) 295-6787 or (808) 956-8405.

NAKEM YOUTH: IN PURSUIT OF SOCIAL EQUITY AND CULTURAL PLURALISM

Executive Director Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Program Director: Rachelle Aurellano
Program Director: Jeffrey Acido


Let it be on record now: that the idea of Nakem Youth began in 2006 at the 1st Nakem International Conference, the seed of that idea sown in the succeeding years that the Nakem grew roots in the Philippines through the 2nd and 3rd Nakem Conferences, the seed blooming into a young plant at the 4th Nakem Conference, and then nurtured to grow at the first-ever Nakem Youth organizational meeting held at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on December 5, 2009, from 6:00 PM-9:00PM.

We record the event with the meeting of several young people, with Jeffrey and Rachelle facilitating.

We record the place: Spalding Hall 257, at the UH Manoa campus by Maile Way.

With them were James Funtanilla, Donnie Dadiz, Calvin Rilveria and Clifford Badua. Two young students joined them: Isiah Pascua, Jacky Galinato. I was there to serve as a witness, with Jeff and Rachelle asking me to stay on with Nakem Youth as Executive Director, and he and Rachelle Aurellano as Program Directors.

On December 4, Jeffrey, Rachelle, and I met to discuss about the concept of Nakem Youth as an organization, as the youth arm of Nakem Conferences, and as the youth organization that will make a difference in the pursuit of the same Nakem vision of diversity, cultural pluralism, social equity, linguistic justice, education to democracy, and heritage rights.

We said it allowed in that meeting: that while Nakem Youth will journey with Nakem Conferences on that same road that leads to freedom, this youth organization will explore avenues that lead to the recognition of the abilities and competencies of the young in effecting the much needed social change for the many communities long deprived of their basic right to their ideas, the right to their sense of what is just and fair, the right to their languages and cultures, the right to their social spaces that make them realize that community is meant people, traditions, heritage, dreams, visions, purposes, and the collective quest for that which is true and good.


We have so many dreams for Nakem Youth.

We dream of this youth organization as the first-ever to recognize that the right to citizenship is intertwined with the right to one’s own language and culture even as we recognize our obligation to come into a communion with the larger culture where we find ourselves.
For Nakem Youth, these realities are not incompatible but come as complementary to each other, completing what is to be completed, building up from what is in there, and forging a future from the promises and possibilities of the present.

At Nakem Youth, we dream, and in that dream, we hand in to the young the key to a new world that reveals to us the vastness of a tomorrow that has yet to unfurl before us.

At Nakem Youth, we dream of a Youth Community Language Program that will put together a long-term program for heritage language education.

At Nakem Youth, we dream of a Nakem Youth People’s Theatre that will showcase both the terpsichorean and dramatic abilities of our youth even as they use these abilities to educate our communities of the many issues affective everyone. At the Nakem Youth People’s Theatre, theatre is for the community, for education, for social transformation.

At Nakem Youth, we dream of a youth publishing collective, the Nakem Youth Press, that will transform our writings into books and other more permanent printing forms. We will utilize the writings of the youth for educational intervention purposes as well as for our literacy programs.

At Nakem Youth, we dream of a political arm, the Nakem Youth Solidarity Program, that will raise the level of social consciousness of the youth pertaining to social issues, global and local, issues that affect our communities, and issues affecting the meaning of our faith.

At Nakem Youth, we dream of an educational arm, the Nakem Youth Education Forum, that will put in place capacity building measures for our young with respect to having access to both formal and informal education that will prepare them for responsibilities in both the government and the private section.

Today, the core group of the Nakem Youth has been formed.

The next step is how this makes this group ready to face up to the challenges of sustaining the dream, of making this dream a reality.

PAINS OF CHRISTMAS IN THE DIASPORA

For many Christians this month celebrates one of the most holy days—the birth of Jesus Christ. Whether or not he was born on the 25th of December does not matter. It is a marker and a day of celebration for Christians. For other faith traditions it is a secular holiday, no work and more time with loved ones. This holy day is usually celebrated with exchanging of presents (sometimes secretly), gathered together with the family in a large feast consisting of every comfort food, from American to Filipino to some combination of what we call “local food” in Hawaii. Indeed, it is a joyful occasion, something that we ought to observe; after all, it only happens once a year.

Because it only happens once a year, making it all the more important, I want to invite you to reflect on the many meanings of Christmas, especially in the Philippines and the diaspora.

What I failed to mention is this type of Christmas is new to me, and I suspect to many of the Overseas Filipino Worker’s (OFW’s) and their families as well. I was first conscious of the observance of Christmas at the age of five. I was in the Philippines then and I remember being taken by my father to a place called Star City in Manila. It was the closest I got to Disneyland. Still, to this day, I could not figure out what theme this park was meant to convey. Japanese anime mixed with giant ice castles that had long and dangerous slides with haunted houses, roller coasters and my favorite--the bumper cars, of course don’t forget the cotton candy and waffle hotdogs. With the immense roller coasters and video arcades all happening indoors it was impossible to hear oneself even if you screamed your lungs off.

A year earlier my mother had to move to Hawaii to seek employment. Her remittances, all the hard earned 500 dollars, allowed my sister and I to enjoy that unforgettable Christmas night. I don’t ever remember hearing my father say anything except “go try that one, it looks fun, it’s only 30 pesos” or “eat this, it’s good, expensive too!” I realize now that he was trying his best to entertain us, keep us busy, even tire us, just to avoid being asked, “Where’s mom right now? “When does she comeback”? “What is she doing?” He knew well what my mother was doing. Because Hawaii is a day late, my father knew that she was still at work, at Burger King. After her shift, she will carpool with her co-workers for a thirty minute ride to Kailua and clean several condos, owned by a family who just left for a vacation. He knew that he would have to make a phone call a day later when Christmas ends in the Philippines and begins in Hawaii. My father didn’t know but I too was avoiding that conversation.

I want to lift up this layer of alienation for the millions of OFW’s who endure this type of separation. In this time of celebration let us remember that the experiences of Christ are not far from the experiences of the OFW’s. Jesus and his family fled to Egypt because their life was threatened. Likewise, OFW’s flee to countries in the West, China, and the Middle East because of the threat of hunger and poverty in the Philippines. With 70 percent of OFW’s being women, leaving behind their families, with no real legal protection from both home and host country, facing unjust and inhumane conditions, I ask that we celebrate Christmas mindful of the OFW’s who do not have the warmth embrace of their children, husbands, relatives and partners.

In the spirit of Christ’s compassion and solidarity I ask that we say a prayer for the 12 million OFW’s who endure the difficult and traumatic separation from their families. With an average of six cold bodies, mostly women, arriving everyday in the Philippines, let us also send our thoughts and prayers to the families who will receive their loved ones in coffins.

May the grace of god; the blessings of our ancestors, and the wisdom of the anitos make loud those voices that have been silenced. Amen.

THE GUTS AND WHAT IT MEANS TO US ILOKANO-FILIPINO-AMERICAN

“Nangankan, barok?” (Have you eaten yet, son?) my tata and nana would ask me every time I visit their home. No matter what time of the day, whether you’ve eaten a large meal they always seem to have food or ready to make some for me.

My tata and nana also use “have you eaten yet?” as a form of greeting, perhaps similar to the American idiomatic expression “how are you?” or “hello”. Unlike “hello” or “how are you?” “Have you eaten yet?” is both an invitation to eat and a diagnosis of one’s health. It is a question of the wellness of one’s body. Simply, “Have you eaten yet?” can mean, “how is your body feeling?”, “ Does your body need some food?”, “Are you healthy or sick?” “Have you eaten yet?” is a commitment to take care of each other’s health to both family and stranger. In short, it is a language of and from the guts.

If we put into context the words of my grandparents and their generation we can begin to see “Have you eaten yet?” in a deeper sense. My tata is 95 years old, which means he has lived through every war since the First World War. His parents and grandparents lived through the Spanish and U.S. colonial occupation of the Philippines. In time of war and colonial occupation the resources are limited (often the colonizers and land owners keep the majority of the land and food stock) and every bit of food is stretched to survival (this effect continues by the invitation to balon after parties. Ziploc, foil, Tupperwares are put to their use). Despite the limited resources the Ilokano people retained the virtue of communal living. Scarcity of food did not limit their ability to take care of another; it only meant that food had to be rationed strategically in order for the old and especially the youth to survive. The culture of giving and sharing continues today.
In these times of abundance and over consumption of food we are asked what does “have you eaten yet?” mean to our youth? How do we make sense of what it means to be hungry in a time of surplus? What do we feed our youth in order that they feel the hunger of our ancestors?
Perhaps, we can begin by reimagining the food that goes into our bodies. Realizing that there are many things needed to sustain our bodies and mind, not just food. We need food and nourishment for our souls too. As a 24-year-old Ilokano youth, I am ashamed to admit that I have forgotten to speak the Ilokano language; I know more about European and American history then Philippine and Ilokano history; I have confused the meaning of community and traded it with individuality.

I realize now that I am hungry. Hungry for the lost Ilokano words that have slipped my tongue; hungry for the lost and unspoken stories of my grandparents and the sakadas; hungry for that identity that was stripped away by the years of trauma under the colonial occupation of Spain and the forced assimilation of America. More than ever, we need to start remedying the malnutrition of our souls.

To my fellow youth I ask, “have you eaten yet?” of which I mean “are you hungry for what you do not know?” and “are you ready to exorcise the mis-education of our upbringing?” lastly, “are you ready to be whole again, to live a life that is free from self-degradation and the possibility of realizing the dream of our ancestors—freedom, justice, and equality for all?”

COMING TO TERMS WITH OUR TRAUMAS AS IMMIGRANTS

My mother always seems to find a way to laugh at anything like missing her bus, not getting enough tips from tourists, and even when she cuts her finger while slicing tomatoes.
Given my mother’s context such as the struggles she had gone through, I have always more than appreciated her laughter—that lightness in her laughter as if the wrong things can be righted easily. Her laughter contains almost a bittersweet emotion, something that I cannot fathom at times, something that eludes my understanding. I am an immigrant Ilokano now having the stamp of being an American and I cannot, for the life of me, understand how in the heaviness of being, one can, like my mother, take things lightly and in a delirious fun.

But now I realize that her joys are always juxtaposed with the tremendous emotional negotiations she has to deal with.

Western logic has taught me about two things not being able to occupy the same space. But this cannot be true to my mother; this logic falls short of how I should come to terms with our traumas as immigrants, hyphens and all, layers and all. I give up: I cannot apply this logic of the West to my mother. Her context challenges this assumption. I believe that her experiences of joy and sadness have merged and created a distinct emotion, unique only to her situation and experiences. It is a kind of emotion that becomes, to me, a curious admixture of sadness and joy, hope and despair, violent anger and self-restraint. The space she occupies is fragile, requiring her to always keep her balance. If she leans too much on the right she risks turning her despair into suicide; if she leans too much on the left, she turns hope into disillusioned optimism.
As a child of an immigrant mother, I had to leave my country of birth to find that ever-elusive “American dream.” But as I was growing up, I realize that the complexity of unearthing my trauma is inexplicably bound with my mother’s. If I am to explore this deep, dark, but indispensable historical-social biography, I must be wary of the emotional and psychological wounds that my not be ready for surfacing. Here, I must make my assumptions clear. I do not believe that my mother has taken the time to reflect and perhaps heal from the many traumas that she has accumulated in her life. My mother’s process of immigration, which included a lengthy separation from her children and husband and the intensive labor required in working in hotels and restaurants, only to send so much of her earnings to the Philippines to support her family has been physically and emotionally draining. The only way our parents have dealt with this trauma is to repress it, relegating it in the storehouse of difficult memory and pain.
This issue of separation and immigration is not unique to my family. It is part of the narrative of the Ilokano—and Filipino—diaspora. This process has bread many forms of violence and alienation among Ilokano and other Filipino families as well. Domestic violence, breast cancer, youth joining gangs, disconnect between parents and children, are symptoms of the oppressive realities the immigration process may cause.

Given all these, the task now of the youth is to learn from these traumas by identifying and naming these sources of oppression. It is only in coming to terms with these that we are all able to become whole and healthy again.

In order to heal our parents and ourselves we need to articulate a new form of language that brings about non-violent communication, one that teaches us the virtue of patience. We must learn to see beyond the action and emotion of our parents and question the things that have led them and us to this point. Could it be some internalized oppression, a kind of self-hate, self-inflicted deprecation, which makes them feel inadequate to address our current and difficult living conditions? It might take a simple question, “how are you feeling?” to begin to get to the bottom of things. A simple conversation, a simple dialogue, has the potential to find light in the dark and allow the straightening of strained relationships.

The children of the diaspora like us must develop a kind of patience that allows us to respect the experiences of our parents and ancestors while acknowledging our own difficult and traumatic experiences.

The young like us must admit that although we had not grown up knowing and experiencing the political and economic hardships of our parents in the Philippines, we too have had our own challenges living in this new land we have come to scratch out a life.

Indeed, to be alien to the culture of our parents and simultaneously not being accepted as a true “American” is very complicated. Only by listening to the emotions and experiences of our parents can we understand our own complexities and internalized oppression. It is a difficult and daunting task but our liberation will always be inextricably bound with the liberation of our parents.